Changing Soils

So weak to in our series changing soils, that we're going to be talking about praying like a disciple maker.

The first habit of a disciple maker is a vibrant, active prayer life, whether your prayer Warrior already or you struggle to keep your mind focused. While blessing, God will meet you where you're at. Disciple-making is a spiritual activity and the devil doesn't like it. And our greatest weapons are the word of God prayer. Today, we will learn some practical habits that are the first steps from moving from the foreign to busyness to the fruitful good soil, that produces a harvest. So let's Dive Right In Our scripture. For today comes from John chapter 15 verses 5 through 17 I am the vine. You are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and whether such branches are picked up thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words, remain in you ask, whatever you wish and it will be done for you. This is to my father's Glory that you bear much fruit showing ring yourself be my disciples as the father has loved me. So have I love you now? Remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. Just as I have kept my father's commands and remained in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this to lay down. One's life for one's friends. You are my friends. If you do what I command, I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends for everything that I learned from my father, I have made known to you. you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit, fruit, that will last And so that whatever you ask in my name, the father will give you. This is Mike meant love each other.

You know, prayer is the first habit that were going to talk about because like I said in the intro that disciple-making is a deeply spiritual act that the devil absolutely hates. I mean, when God wants to build and seeks to build his kingdom, Satan wants to battle. The good news is that God is much more powerful than the enemy and we know that he already defeated him. He defeated sin and death know this is Jesus speaking to his disciples on the night before he's going to be arrested and ultimately crucify. So this is a big deal to him. When did you catch the word that Jesus shares a whopping eight times and just 12 verses? Well, here's a hint. If you missed it, remain in the passage till you figure it out.

If you haven't figured it out, our job is to remain in him. So we better have a good idea what it means to remain in Jesus and what it means for Jesus to remain in US.

You'll hear Jesus weaves another plant, illustration, in the middle of his command for us to remain so that we can better understand it. Is the vine and we are the branches. What is the role of a branch?

It's not to wake up every morning thinking about what this Branch can accomplish on their own. It's not to try really hard for this Branch to grow its personal favorite fruit, despite what all the fruit around it on the other branches may be doing. It's surely not to go off on its own and discover its unique gifts and abilities as a strong independent branch. No. Every Branch only has one job and it's a simple job to stay connected to the Vine. If that connection ever gets cut, its life is over it. Quickly, Withers and dies. So different for a disciple for a disciple remaining. Need staying connected to God.

What helps you feel like you are connected to God. You know, we're all different people. So sometimes it's different things. For some, it may be spending time reading scripture each day, which we all should be doing that one, but sometimes that means more certain people, part of remaining in him means filling your mind with his words remaining in him. You spend time in his word each day and you meditate on the things of God, that's how you know, his plans and you know, how to act in accordance with those plants. Beckman, listening to worship songs while you're in your car, riding and tactful Bible verses down on cards or figuring out some way to help you commit them to Memory. Baby for you. It's spending a focused amount of time in prayer with God each day.

for a lot of people to think about focused time, extended Focus time in prayer with God seems a little overwhelmed because let's be honest, many of us suffer from spiritual ADHD, praying for a friend in Papua New Guinea in before, you know it, you're craving Papa. John's Pizza in your, on your phone looking up on the app. How long it would be till your pizza gets there? It's hard to maintain Focus sometimes. But this is where I want to spend some time today because I believe it's vital to us staying connected to the truth by our Lord, and Savior. Jesus Christ. So let's look at some of the unbelievable promises that Jesus gives about what happens if we stay connected to him. The first one is that he will bear much fruit through you. That sounds like a pretty good description of someone living on the fruitful soil. In fact, he says, if you don't stay connected to him, you won't be able to do any lasting fruit. Now, that's a little scary. But isn't it awesome to think that by staying connected to Christ? We are promised that we will bear much fruit.

Number two, is that he will answer your prayers.

It doesn't mean that you can view Jesus as your Cosmic, Guinea your vending machine in the sky and get everything you want when you want it. But as we stay connected to him, his heart becomes our heart and his prayers become our prayer. We start praying for the things that God wants.

We realize that all those things that we so often fill our hearts and our minds with are not significant in the scope of Eternity and the impact that God is looking to have on our world through us. So as we stay connected to him as we grow

His heart becomes our.

Number three, is that he will be glorified through your large amount of fruit. As your heart becomes his heart is. God works through you. He experienced that and says it like worship from you to him. Your acts of service become acts of worship.

You're actually says that this proves that you are really his disciple, that's what Jesus said. When he says, you know, if you keep my Commandments Do we prove we are his disciples, not by how loud we sing or Ministries, we serve or how many Ministries we servants. But by the fruit coming from our lives,

Number for is Jesus, will fill you completely with his toy. Your happiness. True happiness is a feeling but joy. Joy is a choice. you know, this means that no matter what we go through in this life, Jesus has promised that as we remain in him, our joy cup will be filled to overflowing Having Joy. No matter the situation. May be the number one way, Jesus follower, stand out from the rest of the world.

You know when we face those challenging things in life and were able to do so with a smile on her face, still or maybe not even a smile but just a confident assurance that God is with us. You can do that. You will stand out. You will be a light for Christ. Number 5 is Jesus calls, you his friend?

Yeah, I don't even know if I want to comment on this promise. I mean, just take a few seconds and think about the significance of that. The god of the universe calls you his friend.

What you just take a few seconds and think about that over and over again. Are you smiling yet? I know I am in. We all should be. Number 6, is that he will produce fruit that will last for all eternity through you.

Think about it. There really are only a few ways to make fruit blast, right? You could freeze it. You can dry it out or take it seeds and reproduce it many times over. Which one of these do you think Jesus had in mind as he was speaking to his disciples?

That's the whole idea of Single Seed living versus multi-seed living. I remember a couple years ago, I did a whole sermon on this and You're the basic idea is that. If we stay connected closely to him, he will produce fruit through our lives that will multiply and last long past our lifetimes.

Me. The whole goal of a Christian Life Could Be summed up simply by remaining in Christ and allowing him to remain in you. Our job is not to live a fruitful life. Our job is to stay connected to Jesus and let him bear fruit through us. To see the subtle difference in thinking there. It's not by our effort, it's by our connectedness to Jesus. That we become fruitful.

With that said, there are some specific ways that we can pray that will help us grow as disciplemakers.

First one is pray for yourself.

The Apostle Paul was constantly asking people to pray for him and his popular prayer request was for him to be a disciple maker.

Not in the way. I look at it. If that's true for Paul, then it's definitely true for me. It's definitely true for all of us. I found for many of us are most popular prayer. Requests are often surrounded around health and safety which are good. What if you made your most frequent prayer? Request prayer. That God would grow you. As a disciple maker that God would use you to make disciples. Who would make disciples

That's the difference between Single Seed and multi seed living.

The second helpful habit is to pray for others.

My guess is that to some extent? We all pray for others already, you know? And as we trained to be disciples that make other disciples, we just need to grow a little bit more in here this area. You're absolutely God wants us to pray for others spontaneously when they crossed our minds, but if we only do that most likely we won't pray for too many different people. Yeah, the people that I pray for spontaneously are the ones I see on a regular basis. That's just true for any of us. but if you want to enlarge your impact, you have to enlarge the circle of who you are praying for This is where a prayer list comes in handy, you know, maybe you want to be sure you're praying for missionary.

You know, and if you go through a name, each of the missionaries that, you know, and pray for the Ministries that they are involved in the people there and acting that is your prayer life planting multiple seeds, not just a single seed.

The subtle shift, but it's one that begins to change our mindset. We begin to see the world. The way God does we begin to see the need for Christ the way he dots.

Third one. Is pray with others.

Heroic first, this sounds a little odd. Makes us a little uncomfortable because most of us are used to the idea and the culture that we now live in, where it's okay to express everything, every thought you have no matter how rude or crude just don't express that you believe in Jesus.

But when you pray for someone,

let them know about it. Maybe even text your prayer to them, or email them a prayer so that they can read it, you know, or just let them know that you did. I know that sounds strange but you'll be amazed that even people who are not spiritual usually still are grateful for a free prayer. The truth is they tried everything in their life and they're still have struggles. And they probably think, what can it hurt? It may even initiate a conversation about what they want you to pray about her. What they do believe in or why they struggle to believe in God. Or maybe it just gives you an opportunity to Simply share why you pray for people.

You know, those are things that take this from being just a kind gesture or something to mark off your to-do list as a Christian to being a disciple making tool. Because as you share with that other person, why you are praying for them or why you pray for other people and why you might even pray for people, you don't know or people that don't like you. Or believe the same with you. That becomes a discipling moment and even though that person may not know Christ, yet you are beginning to disciple them. small shift in our mindset, but It becomes. Different way of looking at the world as your mind becomes more like Christ mind.

I think we see so many of The Parables that we see in scripture because Christ saw every moment that he was with the disciples as a teachable moment as a time when he could, let them see things from God's perspective.

Now they're like most of us, they struggle sometimes to get it. And as we read it, the scripture we think, okay? How dumb are? They that they didn't get it?

well, the truth is I would imagine We do many of the same things.

But the truth is all of us are growing everyday until we meet Christ and Glory. So we're all disciples on the path but as we grow his disciples ourselves, we should want to bring others along with us. We should want to help make more disciples because of the blessings in the benefits we've seen in our life. We should want to share that and grow that in others.

All three of these habits could be done in a couple minutes a day and it'll grow as you continue to grow in. Jesus,

So, next week, we will continue to look at other habits. Well, actually, no, we won't next week. We will have our preschool program then the week, after that, we'll jump back into week, 3 of our series. Let's pray.

Dear Jesus. Sweet. Thank you for meeting us wherever we are and loving us so much that you don't let us stay there. today, as we Unpack. This first habit of disciple makers, would you enable us to focus to clear out the distractions and to truly hear your voice and Lord when we spend time and prayer, would you help us to be able to focus? Lord, help us overcome our spiritual ADHD and focus in on YouTube? Push out all the distractions and hear your voice.

Lord, we pray that this will help us to see how you are working to take us from the storms to the fruitful good soil. Lord help us to see out this prayer. Life is an essential tool in our battle between spiritual life and spiritual death. or not, just for us but for all those around us,

Lord, I pray that you will help us to surrender time out of our busy schedules every day. Spend time in your word and spend time in prayer with you. Are we pray this all in your most? Holy name? Amen.